Onigiri spit take and roll
by So Guhn
Summary: Lelouch. Further proving his kind is not useless in the kitchen. Lelouch x Kallen, a little C.C./Kallen.


_Onigiri spit take and roll_ **; PG - gen/humour/romace - Lelouch x Kallen, a little C.C./Kallen**

Sometimes you wake up and your hands don't smell the same way they used to when you first went to sleep.

The rice is done and cooling, Kallen wets her hands and pinches salt about them, the umeboshi and nori to her left, the rice to her right, an empty plate waits to be filled with her bounty. Afterwards she will place them each in a box and give them to- her ears turn a little red at the thought. She wants to believe that there are other little things she can do for him outside the battlefield, outside her purpose as his bodyguard, his soldier, his comrade. She's not exactly sure what else, she wants to be, but there is no harm in venture. Plus, it has been a long while since she's made onigiri, he liked Japanese food right? She still remembers that time when he had walked into the student council room with rice on his face. She snorts down a laugh. Five riceballs already made while she had been stuck in her thoughts.

"What's so funny?"

She gives a start at that voice, alarm ringing about every muscle; she can't hide- "What are you doing here?" she says accusingly, as if of all places he wasn't allowed in the kitchen. He looks at her similarly, an apron what he had been least expecting to find her in.

He locks the door behind him; smoothly removing the mask, every door in their headquarters seemed to have a lock. He sets it down a counter a ways from the one she's making onigiri on, if her face reddens she doesn't notice. Lelouch answers just as smoothly, a brow quirked- "I was hungry. What are you making?"

She has half the mind to shuffle steps before him and block his view, but he's already removing his gloves and washing his hands, drying them after- he picks one up, lumpily shaped, the nori crinkled in ways thought unimaginable, almost laughing and regretting all at once what he says next, "...what is this?"

She snatches it out of his hand and places it back on the plate gently (as if it were to do it good), frowning, and glaring, and deeming him all sorts of rude, but most of all embarrassed. He knows what it is.

"I- I'm making everyone," a sorta lie, C.C. ate pizza all the time; this would do some good right? "...lunch."

With the intention of him eating some as well, most of all, he doesn't have to know that of course. "Oh?" he almost makes the motion to fold him arms, but thinking against it- having just washed his hands, sidles up to her, and repeating the continued process of wetting his hands and rubbing salt upon them, her words of refusal at accepting help fro-from Zero- she meant, Lelouch and and a... a- boy, a Britannian! Would hurt her Japanese- (never mind that) her _female_ pride (she had that you know, though it never seemed to come into play) the words came out as mere angry sputtering. He was already making one, hands professionally shaping the triangle shape she had deemed impossible to grasp.

"Are you?" he says, humoured, she wants to take an onigiri and smash it into that smile of his, but his- why did they look so nice, and... and _triangle_- he continues, "It would explain the anticipating line before the kitchen, and the amount of people sitting at the tables empty handed. Are you sure there'll be enough?"

She continues the sputter from earlier, "A line?"

"Yes."

She sidles up next to him, face the colour of determination, "Lelouch."

"What?"

"...teach me."

He sets down what is probably his fifth one by now, and silent stretching but not reaching, gaze scanning over her onigiri, thoughtful. He looks to her in knowing deduction- "Alright."

If he's trying not to laugh he's doing a good job at holding it in. She wets, salts, and puts the rice in her hand, the filling then- "No, that's-" an aggravated move of his hands, he makes another to set an example. Hers still comes out... unsatisfactory as she tries to mirror him.

He comes up from behind her to give better instruction; she gives a small jump when his arms come about her.

"Like this," he says, placing his hands over hers, and directing them, trying to move her fingers and hands the way he wants them to move, she's only a little bit too aware of his chest against her back to be concentrating on if she's doing it right or not anymore. This process is carried out continuously, the onigiri look like triangles and not lumps with his "instruction" as time goes by. Her breath escapes her when he pulls back. They are done. There is no more rice. It's quiet that puts itself between them.

They'd been admiring their work, their onigiri side by side now, that she hadn't been expecting any interruption in the silence. There's an odd motion, about his hands, having washed them again, he could freely hold them about his person. He fixes them on his hips momentarily, before folding his arms as he could not before. She smiles a tangent short, "They look good."

He takes out the intended bento box from earlier; her heart gives a start, "What are you doing?"

Lelouch has started to pack away the few she had shaped herself, she looks on indignant, quickly rushing over to grab at his wrists with all the intention to stop him. "Stop! Why-"

"We can't have," jokingly, that tempered teasing she so hated, yet- looking on at him, his dark hair bent over about his eyes as he looks down from the onigiri to her, parting ways, "you losing face can we?"

Kallen lets go of his wrists, when the box if half full and there remains none of hers. He motions for her to take the trays.

"They're waiting," he says, she wonders if it will hurt his pride if she tells the others she has had his help and almost smiles fully, knowing it would. He's putting back on the mask as she balances the trays, the partially opened and unlocked door, a cry of joy rising at the glance of her half seen figure bearing food; she turns her head to look back at him.

"Say," she says, voice quiet, as if not wanting him (other's) to really hear, "Thanks."

She exits before he can reply.

--

She knocks on the door to his room, an almost office, where he and C.C. lingered upon the other, talking of meaningful things, meaningless things; that which does not include her no matter how many times she has insisted. (Always C.C.'s clever smile, her words the same, speaking "Us? You mean from you.")

When he had been Zero she would obediently wait for his permission, her own knock more timid than intended. She didn't want him to be displeased with her in any manner, but now that he was Lelouch- she twists the door handle expecting it to be locked, and it swings open with the unexpected force she had put into it, no longer timid. C.C. absent from the room. She doesn't understand her relief, spotting him solitary sitting at his desk, mask scandalously off for a door that had not been locked.

"Lelouch-"

She walks in on him with rice all over his face; her stomach feels like it has dropped.

"You're eating them?!" she continues forward, rushing at his desk, jostling it. A few pens escape the holder, his face clearly reads as not amused. She gapes at the onigiri (in that bento box) that is clearly, clearly clearly on his desk (as clear as the rice sticking to his face) and just-

"It's not as if the shape counts for the taste," he replies, and has half the mind that he should have not said anything at all and instead continue teasing her half spent cooking skills (and it would come to surprise to him that she is perfect at making things like fish and chips, and steak and- everything not Japanese, but that is a lesson for another day.) Kallen remains ever indignant, her mouth still agape until-and to him she does an almost peculiar thing, a hand about her neck and face a little... a little red. It was hard to tell when she kept turning away.

He had... he had taken all the onigiri she and she alone had made so he could eat it himself, (there was this odd fluttering about her chest, her stomach) he... still had rice on his face. For someone as orderly and neat as him she had not been expecting that. She runs out calling, "I'll go get you some napkins!" passing C.C. in the hall as the witch enters, a brow risen at the almost ecstatic smile on the other girl's face and Kallen thinking that what she had seen in C.C.'s hand odd, because it was not a pizza box. C.C. whispers something under her breath that sounds like "A shame." However all Lelouch hears is-

"I knew it."

C.C. tells Lelouch, as she holds up one of the onigiri he had made to Kallen's, smiling in an almost coy, ridiculing manner. She sets his down and exchanges it for Kallen's. Lelouch looks up at her curiously, (that kind of arrogant, unbelieving curiosity) hands folded into the other, he wants to find the rice on his face and pick it off (not that he thought Kallen would, and then eat it. As that other, as that-) but, "What's wrong with it?"

C.C. bites into the exchanged onigiri, obviously pleased with herself, leaning against his desk momentarily, before jumping step- she makes her way out again. "Nothing," her tone changes, and it's like he knows what's coming, that transition from nonchalant to teasing, as if he is young young young (and she is just old, not old old old) her fingers wave from the edge of the doorframe.

"Except these ones taste better because they were made with _love_"

Lelouch rummages around his desk drawer for a mirror, more an excuse that if anyone else dared come in they wouldn't see his face, it felt a little hot. He passes it off as irritation.

--

Kallen frowns as she rummages through the drawers in the kitchen for napkins, ignoring the cheers she had gotten in returning. Agitation growing ever larger, as she thought, the same annoying logo adorning each and every napkin- were they so poor an organization that they still had to keep all the free napkins they got from Pizza Hut?!


End file.
